Thursday, November 5, 2015

We get way too worked up over trailers; will we care about the real issue?

So
now, what are we supposed to think about film director Spike Lee and his
upcoming project that supposedly will expose just how gruesome and grisly our
wonderful city of Chicago truly is?

Many
political people gained attention for themselves by trashing Lee back when his
film crews were in Chicago shooting the footage that will eventually become the
film that is scheduled to be released next month.

NOW,
A TRAILER that will play in movie theaters for the next few weeks is promoting
the film.

Like
most trailers, it is a brief strip that depicts the “big name” actors who will
be in the project and probably shows us all the highlights of the film – but in
such a non-contextual way that we have no clue what the film truly is about.

After
all, why should we see the film if the whole story got revealed in a 30-second video
blitz?

Personally,
the fact that actor Samuel L. Jackson is involved intrigues me enough to think
this film might be worth some attention – although learning that actor John
Cusack is playing a Father Pfleger-like priest makes me think it will be too
over the top.

BUT
FOR MOST people, I suspect the whole reason they’re getting worked up over the
film is the subject material – an aspect of Chicago that some people like to
blow completely out of proportion.

While
other people want to go so far out of their way to ignore to as to assuage any
guilt they ought to be feeling. If anything, it is those people whose skin Lee
is trying to get under.

How
else to explain the line of narration used in the trailer telling us that the
homicide total in Chicago tops the casualty total of American Special Forces
who served in Iraq?

That’s
a loaded statement in and of itself. It should not be taken as a simple fact
that cannot be questioned. It needs to be kept in its own unique context.

YET
I HAVE to admit the real problem when it comes to urban violence in Chicago isn’t
really that people in select neighborhoods are killing each other off.

It
is that the rest of us (those of us fortunate enough to not live in a place
like Englewood or North Lawndale) all too often are willing to accept those
homicide totals – so long as they stay within the boundaries of those
neighborhoods.

We
may very well think on some level that “those people” just don’t know any
better, or don’t really matter. So long as “real people” (like ourselves) aren’t
impacted, we can live with those homicide totals.

Those
news stories we see in Monday morning newspapers every so often about how the
death tally took a jolt upward are something we think of as merely a part of
the local color.

SO
LONG AS none of the addresses of where those violent outbursts took place are
anywhere near a place we have ever gone to, we tolerate it. That is the REAL
problem our society faces, and I don’t know how successfully a Spike Lee film
will be able to take this issue on.

For
every notable moment in “Do the Right Thing” (I’m still appalled by actor John Turturro’s
racist pizzeria worker, even though I know such people really do exist and pass
themselves off as respectable), we get something so absurd as in “Bamboozled.”

Which
is my own personal fear about “Chi-raq” – it could wind up providing such a ridiculous
vision of what is happening in certain parts of our city that it makes the
masses amongst us all the more that this is an issue that really doesn’t impact
us!

Adding
to the isolation that certain residents of Chicago could wind up feeling would
be the ultimate low blow to their futures.

-30-

EDITOR’S
NOTE: Excuse me for thinking it presumptuous to think anyone is going to get
the allusions to Lysistrata – they’re more likely to think it is a film done
partially in rap.

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in places like Calumet City, Ill., and Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.